Saving Private Ryan

Steven Spielberg directed this powerful, realistic re-creation of WWII's D-day
invasion and the immediate aftermath. The story opens with a prologue in which a veteran
brings his family to the American cemetery at Normandy, and a flashback then joins Capt.
John Miller (Tom Hanks) and GIs in a landing craft making the June 6, 1944, approach to
Omaha Beach to face devastating German artillery fire. This mass slaughter of American
soldiers is depicted in a compelling, unforgettable 24-minute sequence. Miller's men
slowly move forward to finally take a concrete pillbox. On the beach littered with
bodies is one with the name "Ryan" stenciled on his backpack. Army Chief of Staff Gen.
George C. Marshall (Harve Presnell), learning that three Ryan brothers from the same
family have all been killed in a single week, requests that the surviving brother, Pvt.
James Ryan (Matt Damon), be located and brought back to the United States. Capt. Miller
gets the assignment, and he chooses a translator, Cpl. Upham (Jeremy Davis), skilled in
language but not in combat, to join his squad of right-hand man Sgt. Horvath (Tom
Sizemore), plus privates Mellish (Adam Goldberg), Medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), cynical
Reiben (Edward Burns) from Brooklyn, Italian-American Caparzo (Vin Diesel), and
religious Southerner Jackson (Barry Pepper), an ace sharpshooter who calls on the Lord
while taking aim. Having previously experienced action in Italy and North Africa, the
close-knit squad sets out through areas still thick with Nazis. After they lose one man
in a skirmish at a bombed village, some in the group begin to question the logic of
losing more lives to save a single soldier. The film's historical consultant is Stephen
E. Ambrose, and the incident is based on a true occurance in Ambrose's 1994 bestseller
D-Day: June 6, 1944.